War junkies - written by david m. o'neill | David M. O'Neill

In 1974, Jim Bennet, a Los Angeles based political beat-reporter discovers U.S. government has no interest in actually winning America's ill-advised conflict in Vietnam. THE BLACKLIST Era: 1960s-70s Locations: Globetrotting Budgets: Blockbuster Genre: Action & Adventure, Action Thriller, Family Drama, Period Drama, Political Drama, Family, Political Thriller, Romance, Romantic Drama, War, War Adventure, War Drama, War Epic, War Romance, Wartime Espionage Logline: An ambitious journalist leaves his loving family at home when he takes a potential career changing transfer to Asia to cover the Vietnam War and finds himself in a deadly situation that only escalates the longer he is there, threatening to take his life and those the colleagues he comes to work with. Strengths: One of the coolest things going for the script is just how well the jargon for the war/military, meshes with the journalist jargon and the time period at hand. There's clearly a ton of research that has been done to pull a script like this off, but it feels natural throughout in terms of the setting and worlds that we get to see. Bennett is a heroic character and from the first moment he volunteers to go get the story and Vo dies, to when he's leading his MIA group through the village, and ultimately returning home to his family we get to see this played out. There are some strong supporting characters that really help to beef the subplots up and make this story much bigger than Bennett. One of those is Sarah and her ultimate fiery attitude doesn't come off as derivative or cliche in the way her character plays out. She's a nice addition to Bennett's personality and someone that has been there longer than him so they get this bond that ends up being able to show the audience a more jaded side of things that becomes apparent once Bennett gets into the thick of things. The action is played out with a ton of vivid scenarios that would surely make this a visually beautiful script to see brought to life. The historical nature of the script pulls up the skirt on a military conflict that could definitely make for a powerful film. Weaknesses: Bennett is an ambitious guy, and we see him humbled several major times throughout, but he's also very heroic. There may be room to get more out of Bennet. This could be done in the set up when he's back in the US. Getting more of how he feels about the war could help this. We see the protest/riot in the beginning, and Barbara stating that he said it's the story of a whole generation, and the GI telling him in the plane that he doesn't think that they're there to win the war is powerful, this could be a tool to track Bennett's mindset even further than it already does in the 1st act. The conversation after the bar fight when Bennett is talking with Sarah about it being worth it is another good moment, but possibly too expositional after not being able to feel enough of this built out throughout the plot leading up to it. Prospects: This is THE KILLING FIELDS and ARGO meets BLOOD DIAMOND. It's a war movie with a journalist in the protagonist role. It would take a big budget to pull this script off as is due to the war scenes that are written in to create a lot of the suspense and thrills throughout. That being said, it's a side of the war that is a unique one and Bennett's a powerful protagonist that could work for a big time movie star. Due to the budget it would take to make this, pulling back on some of the more expositional dialogue and action, could help really strengthen the project overall. There's a happy ending, for Bennett at least, and the overall themes of the war are exposed in a unique and powerful way. At the very least, the pace of the plot and the amount of things shown to us that Bennett must overcome will definitely give this script a shot at being an extremely strong writing sample.